I had been wondering exactly what the Doofus-in-Chief was going to talk about in his prime-time address on Iraq later this week. Now
I think I have an idea:
At a summer villa near Balad in the hills 40 miles north of Baghdad, a group of Iraqis and their American visitors recently sat down to tea. It looked like a pleasant social encounter far removed from the stresses of war, but the heavy US military presence around the isolated property signalled that an unusual meeting was taking place.
After weeks of delicate negotiation involving a former Iraqi minister and senior tribal leaders, a small group of insurgent commanders apparently came face to face with four American officials seeking to establish a dialogue with the men they regard as their enemies.
The talks on June 3 were followed by a second encounter 10 days later, according to an Iraqi who said that he had attended both meetings. Details provided to The Sunday Times by two Iraqi sources whose groups were involved indicate that further talks are planned in the hope of negotiating an eventual breakthrough that might reduce the violence in Iraq.
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Washington seems to be gingerly probing for ways of defusing home-grown Iraqi opposition and of isolating the foreign Islamic militants who have flooded into Iraq to wage holy war against America under the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
According to Agence France Presse, a congressional staffer and a representative from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad were also present at the two meetings on June 3 and 13, the paper reported, citing Iraqi sources.
But here's the really interesting bit, from the AFP report:
Excluded from the talks were repesentatives of Iraq's most wanted man, Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
But the Army of Asnar al-Sunna also has links with Al-Qaeda and has claimed a string of suicide bombings, including one against the mess hall of a US base in Mosul last year that killed 22 people.
Whatever happened to this Bush?
We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts [the September 11 attacks], and those who harbor them. ...Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
Unless, apparently, there's more to be gained in terms of making the preznit look good by negotiating with them.
I also have to wonder if this report was not at least one of the motivating factors behind that odious speech of Karl Rove's the other day. When you know that news is coming out that you have negotiated with people you have been deriding as terrorists, insurgents, dead-enders, etc., and knowing that this is going to seriously piss off some of your more rabid base, the obvious move for a Republican extremist is not to present factual information in a rational manner. It's to hype up the base by throwing them oratorical red meat, and hoping they're so distracted by the "hate the liberals, they're the source of all your problems" rhetoric that they won't notice the news stories about the Bush administration negotiating with terrorists.
That tactic makes even more sense given that the latest ARG poll shows that Bush and his policies have lost virtually all support among independent voters. The poll, conducted June 19-22, contacted a random sample of 1,100 adults in the United States by telephone, and has a margin of error of ± 2.6 percent. It shows Bush with an overall approval rating of 42% (53% disapprove, overall). But among independent voters, Bush's approval is only 17%, and his disappoval rating is 75%.
If Bush and the Republicans can't carry independent voters, they are toast. Period. Game over. Count on large Democratic gains in the 2006 midterms, and any chance of the Republicans retaining the White House in 2008, assuming the Democrats nominate someone who isn't dead or otherwise a complete non-entity, is vanishingly small. The only way to counter a loss of independent voters, when your party has no cross-over appeal (Bush's approval rating among Democratic voters is only 18%, or roughly the same as among independents), is to fire up your base.
I don't think that trick is going to work its usual magic for the Republicans this time around. They've gotten just about all of their base out in the last couple of election cycles. There isn't any more blood to be wrung from that particular turnip. And unless Bush and his handler-minions can manage to distract their base from paying attention to stories about how he's suddenly gone soft on terror, Señor Arbusto is going to be in a world of political hurt. And he's going to have a lot more 'splainin' to do than he can manage in a one-hour televised address, given his manifest rhetorical deficiencies.
Cross-posted from Musing's musings.